[mythtv-users] Nielsen wants to know...

[Dan Wilga]

Nielsen's stock in trade has always been statistics, not data mining. 
While I obviously can't predict that they won't start doing the latter, 
I think it's unlikely, as content providers still rely heavily on the 
same types of reports they have always produced.

I have participated in a Nielsen surveys in the past. The first was 
about 15 years ago, and the second about a year ago. I have so far not 
seen any tangible change in intrusiveness (telemarketing, junk mail, 
online advertising) as a result of either. Here's a link to Nielsen's 
privacy policy:

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/privacy-policy/privacy-policy-tv-all.html

which says that they only use data in aggregate to produce statistical 
reports. About the only somewhat annoying thing is section " E. Do you 
provide my personal identifying information to anyone?" which says that 
they do give personally identifyable info to other companies, who are 
contractually obligated not to use it for business purposes.

While it may seem that the reason they ask so much personal information 
is so that they can market directly to you, I really don't believe that 
is the case here. It's being done so that they can more accurately say 
things like, "Males aged 35-40 with a median income of $40K in urban 
regions like to watch Family Guy from 7:00-7:30 PM on Tuesdays". They're 
not selling data about you, they're selling data about people like you. 
Being part of their reports is a probably one of the more significant 
ways to influence the behavior of content providers.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20150824/6f5cd384/attachment.html>